The Sixth Member Of The Team
by Manchester
Summary: There’s Scooby-Doo, of course, and then Shaggy, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and….well, it ain’t Scrappy-Doo. YAHF what else?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights to whatever characters mentioned here belong to their proper owners.

_Yes!_

His eyes on the prize in the reject bin, Xander Harris had an ear-to-ear grin on his face as he stepped forward to collect what he'd been praying for, a toy pistol perfectly identical to a World War II Colt .45 automatic, which would go great with his Halloween costume. He inwardly gloated,_ I can't believe my luck, the last thing in there, and it's perfect!_

Stopping at the edge of the nearly empty crate that had been filled with knocked-down trinkets and replicas, Xander reached into the bin and promptly learned that he shouldn't have given the Sunnydale Hellmouth yet another opportunity to show that the teenager with a goofy smile was truly the dimension nexus' favorite butt-monkey.

Faster than Xander could blink, a diminutive arm came blurring down from the other side of the crate, snatching up the toy gun. Open-mouthed, Xander looked past the crate to see a kid half his age sneering at the high-school student, a clear message on the little monster's face of, "You snooze, you lose."

Clutching to his chest the copy of the weapon Xander desperately needed, the kid whirled around and scampered off through the rows of expensive costumes at Ethan's, the new costume shop in Sunnydale that had opened just a few days ago and still had managed to have the word go around quickly that it was the best place ever for Halloween outfits, attire, ornaments, and make-up that could turn anyone into their favorite fantasy for that holiday. Costume Town couldn't possibly compare.

Xander gaped after the child for a moment, and then he went in pursuit, his voice frantic as he left the reject bin area to dash after the little boy, calling, "Look, kid, I really need that gun, so maybe we can come to some kind of arrange--- YEOW!"

A few moments later, Xander hopped on one foot back to the reject bin, his other leg lifted up and gripped in his hands, a grimace of pain on the teenager's face. Holding on to the bin's edge with one hand, he gingerly put his injured leg back down on the floor and bent over to rub his shin currently aching from a vicious kick. "Little shit," he muttered. "I hope during his next soccer game his shorts fall down in front of everyone."

Xander straightened up and glumly regarded the empty bin. _Oh, great, what am I gonna do now?_ he despondently thought. _Grandpa Harris' Army fatigues just don't work without some kind of gun. Hmmm, maybe I can bluff it out, claim I'm some kind of philosophical pacifist, steal Giles' spouting off that 'a rational army would run away.' Nah, that only works if you deliver it in a classy, stuffy British accent._

Behind him, a voice inquired, "Do you require assistance?" while uttering the question in a classy, stuffy, British accent.

You don't _do_ that kind of thing to people born on a Hellmouth.

The shop proprietor watched in befuddlement as the teenager he had just addressed broke the world's record for the standing high jump, spinning around in mid-air and grabbing for something in his rear pants pocket as he landed on his feet, with the young man's alarmed face finally recognizing who had just spoken to him.

Xander managed to freeze just before he yanked out his emergency stake, his right hand clutching the piece of wood held securely down the back of his pants, and he tried to look as innocent as possible. Considering where his hand was, he doubted he was succeeding.

_Damn, he's getting suspicious, gotta throw him off the track. Think, think!_

A fiendish inspiration suddenly appeared in Xander's mind.

"Duuuuude," he drawled, while thoroughly scratching his ass.

The older man's face froze in disdain, with his degree of disapproval approaching truly fantastic levels until Xander finally finished and pulled out his hand, only to offer it in a friendly handshake.

The guy actually recoiled and put both of his hands behind himself to stand in a rigid position of displeasure, causing Xander to mentally smirk and congratulate himself. _This guy's easier to wind up than Giles._

A voice now approaching sub-zero temperatures spoke again. Glowering, the older man gruffly said, "As I said before….do you have any business here?" A contemptuous flick of his eyes over the teenager's unkempt attire gained him back some points in their encounter, as the shopkeeper effortlessly indicated this was extremely unlikely.

Xander was in the middle of thinking to himself, _Oh, so you wanna play, bozo? _until he sensibly squashed his urge to further needle the guy. _You can't afford to really tick him off. See what you can find out._

"Um," said Xander, clearing his throat and indicating the empty reject bin. "Somebody else got what I was looking for. Is there any other stuff here I can use with my costume at home? I need a toy gun or rifle from World War Two or later. One that's cheap."

"_How_ cheap?" came the man's question, with a faint sneer accompanying this directed at his potential customer's destitution.

Xander's lips compressed, his lowered face covering the sudden flash of temper that had crossed his features, as he looked down to dig out several crumpled dollar bills out of his right front pocket of his jeans to show the older man.

A glitter in the shopkeeper's eyes showed he was clearly enjoying the opportunity to give his cold rejoinder.

"That is not sufficient."

At these words, the man began to turn away, only to find Xander had slipped into the older man's path, the teenager's face now a bit more desperate and his eyes frantically looking around to find something to convince the shopkeeper to change his mind. Seeing an object alongside the wall across from them, Xander said the first thing that came to mind, "Hey, do you have any more stuff in there?" His extended forefinger jabbed at what he was talking about, his other fingers curled around the money he'd shown the man.

The older man glanced at where Xander was pointing, and he blinked, his condescending expression changing to mild surprise that caused him to give an honest answer. "I'm afraid that isn't part of my stock."

"Huh?" Xander frowned at the plain, large rectangular brown cardboard box set against the wall. The box was about the size to hold a small refrigerator or a clothes washer/dryer.

The older man sighed, and unbent a little to explain, "Whatever's in there was left behind by the previous tenant when they vacated these premises." His face changed into a scowl aimed directly at the box as he continued. "Unfortunately, I was too busy setting up my costume collection to particularly notice or care about that, since there seemed to be enough room. It wasn't until I was finished that I informed the landlord about the box, only to discover that it was now _my_ problem, since he claimed he didn't know anything about the box and that it was my responsibility."

Xander's attentive face made the man carry on with unburdening his frustrations. "Under my lease, I have to clear out the whole store when I leave, or forfeit my tenant's deposit. Now after I close up here, I have to dispose of that box, either by paying someone to move it, or take it along with me, a course of action that I sincerely hope to avoid, as there's no room for it in the lorry I rented --- which means I might have to pay for a bigger vehicle."

The shopkeeper began muttering imprecations under his breath, with Xander finally losing interest. _Guess I'll have to hit Costume Town for a toy gun or something like that_, he thought. As he glumly began to turn away, Xander absently waved sympathetically at the guy, idly adding, "Yeah, I hope you have good luck with that--- HEY!"

Moving with the speed of a striking rattlesnake, the shopkeeper had snapped out his hand to snatch away the cash Xander had been still holding in his own hand. "Give that back!" yelped the teenager, lunging at the man, who nimbly dodged and stepped backwards, holding up a delaying hand, as the shopkeeper gave Xander an oily smile.

"Now, now, just a moment, young man. I think this is an opportunity for us to solve both our problems!" exclaimed the older man.

Xander glared at the shopkeeper and demanded, "What're you talking about? Hand over my money, now!"

Instead of doing this, the older man casually tucked Xander's money into his front shirt pocket, and soothingly spoke to the incensed teen. "_I_ need to get rid of that box. _You_ need to get something to go with your costume, which I'm sure is totally spectacular--- No?" This last came at the heels of Xander's face suddenly turning red and the teenager finding something on the floor totally fascinating.

A momentarily smirk flickered over the shopkeeper's face until the embarrassed teen raised his head again to listen. "What you need to do now is to be…._imaginative!_ Creative! Inventive! Do what you really want to do, not what the world expects of you!" The man beamed at the slightly stunned look now on the boy's face, and majestically waved a hand at the box against the wall.

"What's there is waiting for you, to be unleashed by your true genius onto an unsuspecting planet!" Unnoticed by Xander, the man had been edging closer, until he was next to the boy and laid an encouraging arm over the teen's shoulders, bending down to whisper into an ear and gently shoving him towards the box at the same time. "Go, son, and make me proud."

Xander actually covered almost all of the distance towards the box in a daze, before his mind finally cleared and he stopped short, a look of furious humiliation appearing on his face. He whirled around to see the back of the shopkeeper, who was now at the front of the store by his cash register, and greeting….Buffy and Willow.

_Oh, crap_.

The Sunnydale native frantically examined his options. He could go over there and yell, scream, and threaten to call the cops. In short, make a scene. In front of his bestest bud and the Slayer. Who would undoubtedly take his side, but in the process they would learn just how broke he was and feel sorry for him. Xander shuddered at that. He'd rather be French-kissed by Angel. As his stomach turned over, the teen quickly quantified that to being French-kissed by Larry.

Hastily putting out of his mind the image of both actions (and also the image of Angel French-kissing Larry, and how those two seemed to be enjoying that), Xander reluctantly accepted that even if he did get his money back, no matter how embarrassing it got, the owner of this shop certainly wouldn't sell him anything else. He'd have to go to Costume Town. Which meant, this close to Halloween, that it would be totally crowded and running low on costume stuff. There was a good chance he wouldn't find anything there to go with his Army costume.

Xander gritted his teeth and mentally kissed his cash goodbye. He glumly glanced over at where a large cardboard box was innocently sitting. A box that he now….owned. The teenager felt a flicker of hope. It was remotely possible that there might be something in that box he could use. _Yeah, check it out_.

The boy stepped up to the box and pulled up the interlocked cardboard flaps at the top of the container to open it, and stared down into the box.

Intently searching through the ladies' costumes, Buffy Summers, the Slayer, the current representative of thousands of years of demon hunters, warrior women, defenders of all humanity, and also having the title of She-Whose-Roots-Are-Beginning-To-Show, glanced up at hearing an odd thumping noise. She gazed across the store, and with a look of puzzlement on her face, she nudged Willow Rosenberg standing next to the Slayer, with the redhead uncertainly holding a 1920's flapper outfit in front of her body.

"Hey, Wils, why is Xander acting like that?"

Willow followed Buffy's jerk of her blond head to see what she meant. Both girls gazed with bafflement at their friend standing facing the far wall and pounding his head against that partition.

"Uh….no idea, Buffy."

They watched curiously for a few more moments after Willow's comment, until they looked at each other, simultaneously shrugged their shoulders, and chorused, "_Boys_."

The girls went back to searching for the perfect Halloween costume.

Xander Harris stopped torturing himself when he discovered he was beginning to _like_ it. He turned around to lean back against the store wall and rubbed his aching forehead, absently bumping a box flap with his elbow to send it flipping over to once again cover the top of the box. He glowered at the container itself, fighting down the impulse to give it a mighty kick. _You know who you really want to kick, anyway_.

The teenager grimaced at the sound of the voice in his head, and then he sighed, acknowledging its truth. _This isn't anyone's fault but yours. You didn't have to be so cheap, and then get tricked into owning a box….and what's in it._

Abruptly Xander stiffened straight up from the wall, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his head from his body's sudden shift, instead staring incredulously at the box. A weird grin slowly spread over his face, as he examined the bizarre idea that had just appeared in his mind.

_Yeah, it could WORK! Still cutting it close, though….got to start right now to make it in time for Halloween._ Xander glanced over at where his friends had been, and saw no sign of them, or the shopkeeper. _Must be deeper in the racks. Great! I can get the box out of here before they notice and think I've lost my mind._

Acting at once, Xander turned to face the box and then he squatted down to put his arms around the box as far as they would reach. Gripping as hard as he could without crushing the box, the teenager took a deep breath and heaved. It took some effort, but he managed to lift the box to straighten up and start moving his feet in shuffling steps to turn around and start heading for the front door. Sticking out his head past the side of the box to see where he was going, Xander steadily shambled forward.

Trying not to think about ruptures and hernias, Xander instead started planning as he lugged the box out of the store._ Take this over to Uncle Rory's garage, and get the key he left when he went on his road trip. He's okay with me using his tools, and considering all the junk he's got in there, he won't mind if I take a couple of minor things. I think I saw a stack of leftover paint cans in there from his odd-job construction business. Dunno if there's any with the right colors, but, hey, this is gonna be way better than an army costume!_


	2. Chapter 2

Halloween evening:

The doorbell at 1630 Revello Drive rang. Joyce Summers finished putting down the tray filled with candy on the hallway table and glanced with surprise at the door. It was just beginning to become dusk, with the sun still on the horizon, a bit early for any trick-or-treaters. _Oh, it's probably Xander_. She smiled as she moved towards the door, idly curious at what the boy would be wearing as his Halloween costume while he escorted younger children around the town, as ordered by his high-school principal.

The woman frowned as she paused in front of the door. She had discounted most of Buffy's indignation at being dragooned by the official in charge of her daughter's school, but Joyce had to admit this was going a little too far. She was going to a Halloween party for adults herself later in the evening, and maybe she should have a little chat with the other parents there about a certain short, balding man who evidently thought that running a pre-college educational facility made him God.

Snorting at that, Joyce bent to peer through the security peephole and felt her mood lighten. One of her favorite people was standing there on the porch, a wide grin on his face as he waited for the door to open. Joyce reached out with a hand to turn on the porch light, and shifted her head, trying to see what Xander's costume looked like. Unfortunately, he was too close to the door for her to see clearly anything below his chin, though he looked like he was wearing something dark-colored and extremely bulky.

Mildly puzzled, the woman opened the door, to be promptly greeted with an effervescent greeting of, "Hiya, Mrs. S. Buffy and Willow said they'd both be here and ready to go."

"Er--- Hello, Xander." The woman stared at the boy, unable to determine what exactly his costume was. From her point of view, he seemed to be wearing some kind of….box? The front side of whatever he was wearing was oddly lumpy and there were strange….things attached at the corners. _What IS that?_

The boy chuckled, seeing her confusion, and said, "Just push the door all the way open and back up, will ya? I'll come inside and show all of it to you in the light."

Bemused, the older woman did what Xander asked, and stepped back to watch the boy carefully maneuver his way into the house. His costume was just a bit narrower than the doorway, and he had to be careful not to knock over anything as he shuffled down the narrow hallway. When Xander got out into the foyer, he stopped and turned his whole body to the left, proudly showing off what he was wearing.

Joyce Summers promptly shrieked with laughter, her hilarity ringing throughout the entire house.

"Mom? What's going on?" A young woman's voice came from the upper floor, with this person suddenly appearing at the head of the stairs. Buffy Summers was wearing a magnificent eighteenth-century aristocratic pink gown and her careful descent down the stairs revealed black dancing slippers, pure white hose, and ruffled petticoats below her silk gown.

The girl her age who followed Buffy down the stairs was wearing a ghost costume that in no way matched the Slayer's dress. Willow Rosenberg was clad in a plain white sheet with the word "BOO" scrawled on it by a magic marker, earlier having been talked by Buffy into wearing a racy outfit of sexy boots, a leather mini-skirt, and a skin-tight midriff-baring top under the bedcloth that the redhead was desperately glad no one could see.

The descending girls stopped at the foot of the stairs, bewilderedly looking at the woman wiping tears of laughter from her face, and then their gazes followed where Joyce's waved hand gestured towards the teenager they hadn't yet noticed.

There was an instant as the two girls stared in shock, and then they both erupted with amusement at the top of their lungs. Waves of mirth once again passed through the Summers home, with Joyce happily joining in as they all looked at the grinning boy.

Xander Harris was wearing an exact replica of the Mystery Machine, the 1960's van from the television cartoon series that all five members of the Scooby Gang --- Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and the talking Great Dane, Scooby-Doo himself --- used to travel throughout the entire country, solving numerous mysteries while running around in decaying mansions, swamps, amusement parks, castles and other places to find out who was performing nefarious deeds, to finally solve the crime and have the police take away the villain, with this person then usually muttering something under their breath.

The three females finally stopped laughing, though their humor continued to show in fits of giggles as they all stepped closer and wonderingly examined every detail. There were a _lot_ of these.

Xander's beaming head protruded from the windshield of the replica due to the model being presented in the vertical position, with the nose of the van pointing straight up and the undercarriage in the 90-degree position. Once they adjusted for the odd position, the women could see how a large cardboard box had been cut, trimmed, and shaped to perfectly imitate the body of a slightly absurd cartoon-style enclosed motor vehicle.

Just as much attention had been devoted to the look of the replica as well as the shape. Three sides of the box had been painted the swirling light blue and lime-green colors of the original cartoon van's sides and roof. Also on the sides, Xander had faithfully drawn and painted the psychedelic flower petals and also the curving letters of the van's name: THE MYSTERY MACHINE.

Joyce now understood why she hadn't recognized it was a car right away, since she'd seen it from the front, and marveled at how Xander had painted black the front side that was the replica's undercarriage and also attached vertical and horizontal steel rods to the front side of the box to copy a motor vehicle's drive train and axles.

Buffy blinked at what was attached to the ends of the axle rods. Putting out a finger and flicking it to make one of the diminutive tires at the corners spin, she delightedly asked, "Xander, are these _real_?"

"Yep, real kids' pedal-powered toy car tires," chuckled Xander. "But that's not all the toy car stuff! There's fake headlights and rear lights, bumpers, door handles and clear plastic windows for the front and rear doors, windshield wipers, a steering wheel in here---"

An open-mouthed Willow interrupted her voluble friend to demand, "Xander, where'd you _get_ all this?"

"I was at Ethan's---"

Buffy nodded, contributing, "Yeah, we saw you there."

"I saw you there, too. Anyway, I came across this stuff and the box, and I had the idea right away, so I bought 'em, took 'em all to Uncle Rory's garage and got to work. Managed to finish just an hour ago, and came here right away." Xander smiled at all his friends there, assuring himself that he hadn't told a single genuine lie. Just, uh, rearranging the facts. There wasn't any real need to tell them he got conned out of his cash and stuck with useless stuff, right?

Buffy did look a little puzzled, which made Xander a bit nervous. She pointed out, "Xander, it's a _costume_ shop. Why would they have this toy car stuff there?"

"Oh, the guy who sold it to me said it was stuff left over from the last guy who was there," shrugged Xander, making the replica shudder slightly.

Joyce said thoughtfully, "If you mean the shop by Second and Broadway, I _do_ remember a toy store there before it closed a month or so ago."

Buffy and Willow paid only minor attention to this. Both had edged closer to the replica to look at Xander's body inside the box. Peering through the front plastic windshield, the girls saw straps whose ends were attached to the inner front side of the box, that ran over Xander's shoulders, to end up being attached to the rear side of the box behind him. These straps clearly supported the whole weight of the box on the teenager's shoulders, allowing him to walk around while carrying his costume.

Willow asked doubtfully, "Xan, how do you get out of there? You know, to, uh, go to the bathroom…." The girl's face reddened as she trailed off her unfinished question.

Smiling, the teen boy dipped his knees, causing the replica to sink down to the floor to rest on the edges of the bottom flaps that had been shaped into the open rear double doors. Xander kept dropping his body until he was squatting, his head passing down through the circular hole cut in the top of the front plastic windshield, and his knees just touching the inner front of the box, as he pushed the carrying straps over his head, and then he twisted around in the box.

Xander's body blocked what he was doing from the curious trio, until the entire back side of the cardboard box, which was the replica's roof, swung open for Xander to duck-walk out, keeping his head down until he'd passed under the top of the box. Xander bounced to his feet, spinning around in mid-air to land with outspread arms and a proud, "Taaah-daaaah!"

Joyce, Buffy and Willow all had to applaud, with the redhead dashing to Xander to give him a congratulatory hug that was returned in kind. Pulling back from his embrace, Willow studied Xander's familiar boots, jeans and flannel shirt and reached out to the boy's neck to touch something that was strange. Above his shirt collar was a cloth wrapped around his neck. The Jewish girl looked puzzled as she touched the cloth and felt something hard under her fingers. "Xander, what's that on your neck?"

The boy brought up a hand to his neck and used his forefinger to tug down the cloth until all there could see an odd plastic and metal contraption wrapping around Xander's entire neck. He told them, "This is Uncle Rory's old neck brace, from when he got whiplash in a car accident a couple years ago. I don't know why he kept it in his garage, but I'm glad I found it."

Xander pointed at the circular hole in the front windshield at the top of the replica where his head would protrude when he wore his costume. Shaking his head, Xander wryly said, "Think about what would happen if I tripped or fell forward. Oh, I might manage to break my fall with my hands, but I'd still hit my throat against the windshield's edge. _Not_ a good thing to happen, right?"

Female faces paled at this. Xander reassured them, again touching the neck brace he was wearing. "Don't worry, this thing will work, and I'll be careful."

There were some concerned looks, but Joyce, Buffy and Willow accepted this, with Buffy walking forward. The Slayer stepped around the replica resting on the floor, an interested look on her face while asking over her shoulder, "How'd you get it to open to walk out?"

"You can see the inside, right? Look at the edges, where I cut off the whole back side and re-attached it. The right inner edge of the roof has metal hinges attached to the roof and to the top of the right side. The left inner edge of the roof has just a couple of hook-and-eye things glued to the left sides, to keep the roof side closed. It took a little practice, but I can get right in and out, as you saw." Xander watched Buffy lean over to look at this, and then she reached out with her hand to touch the replica. He urgently spoke, "Buffy, careful of your fingers! I painted the roof last, and it's still tacky, hasn't completely dried!"

Emitting a panicked yelp, Buffy hopped a good yard away, looking at her fingers with horror and then frantically examining every inch of the front of her dress. She heaved a sigh of relief at finding nothing wrong, and then she glared at her smirking friend. "You could have told me that before I almost lost my costume deposit!" screeched the young woman.

"Now, Buffy," Joyce Summers reproved firmly. "Don't yell at Xander. He _did_ warn you." At that, she looked past her fuming daughter towards a window, and continued. "It's almost dark, which means it's time for you to go to the school to meet your charges. Get ready to go, but just before you leave, I want to take some pictures of all of you together in your costumes. I'm going to get my camera." At that, the older woman walked out of the room, leaving behind her a young girl in a splendid aristocratic dress sticking out her tongue at a sniggering Xander and a giggling Willow.

The young man turned to share the happy mood with his bestest bud, only to be met with the most frightening, daunting, chilling, terrifying, and intimidating sight to be found in Sunnydale this Halloween night: Willow Rosenberg's Resolve Face. Gulping, Xander could only stand there and take the redhead's badgering tone, as she firmly said, "Alexander LaVelle Harris, why didn't you tell me earlier about what kind of costume you were going to make? I could have dressed up as Velma Dinkley!"

Xander sheepishly hung his head and mumbled, "Hey, Wils, I only thought of it when I was at the costume store. Once I got the stuff, I knew I had to start making the van right away, and I just got too involved in it to think of you…." At that, Xander closed his eyes to avoid seeing the glare he knew he was getting from Willow as he dug himself deeper in trouble. Only a miracle could save him now.

A miracle came to pass. Buffy's amused voice spoke, "Willow, even if he did remember to tell you what he was doing, I don't really think you could have gotten in time an orange turtleneck sweater, orange calf-high socks, a darker brownish-orange skirt, ugly glasses, and sensible shoes."

Willow shrugged, "Oh, I've got all that in my clothes closet."

Xander nodded his head. "Yeah, she does."

There was a short pause, until Buffy finally spoke again in a somewhat uneasy voice. "Okay, I don't know what's more disturbing, either her---" a blonde head dipped towards a blushing Willow "---having that exact outfit, or _him_---" this time towards a beet-red Xander "---knowing you have that."

There was quiet in the room, until a smirking Buffy brought her hands down to the sides of her upper-class costume, lifted the skirt, and swept around the room in a triumphant dance, watched by two subdued Sunnydale natives.

Xander soon regained his good humor at seeing how happy Buffy was. The Slayer needed a lift for her spirits, considering how stressful her life had been lately. So, he was perfectly willing to give his opinion when Buffy finished a twirl that flared the wide skirts of her gown, and her eyes gleaming, asked, "Hey, Xander, do you think this dress is pretty?"

"You betcha, Buffster." Xander had been around women long enough to know exactly how to answer that, even if the dress in question otherwise resembled something that had been run over by a train and then munched upon by a sudden infestation of locusts. Still, in this case, the teen could truthfully say her costume was nice.

"Good," said Buffy, peering at herself in the hallway mirror. "I hope Angel likes it." She continued looking at her reflection, with the position of the mirror leaving her unable to see how fast Xander's face turned sour.

Just as the teenager opened his mouth to deliver a nasty remark about Mr. Oh-My-Hair's-So-Great-Plus-I-Have-The-Brooding-Thing-Perfected-And-Have-You-Noticed-My-Hair?, he was distracted by a sudden poke in his ribs from the red-haired girl there, shying away from Willow as she also demanded, "Xander, what about my costume?"

"Um…." Xander tried to think of something to say about the ghost costume Willow had worn every Halloween since practically forever. "That's a nice….BOO you've got there."

Willow looked exasperated and shot a glare at a snickering Buffy. At that point, Joyce Summers came back into the room, carrying her camera and calling out, "Xander, would you please get back into your costume? Girls, both of you stand between him and get ready to smile."

A minute later, all three of the teenagers were blinking away the after-images of the numerous camera flashes of Mrs. Summers' dozen photos of the trio. A smiling woman watched them leave, with Xander once again carefully getting through the front door, calling after the young people, "Have fun and be careful! Don't stay out too long!" Joyce then closed the front door.

Despite smiling wryly at her mother having no idea what her daughter's usual night activities were like, Buffy was touched at hearing her mom's gentle concern. It was a rare moment of ordinary life in a truly strange existence for the Slayer, making her literally skip along for a few steps as she walked down the sidewalk with her friends.


	3. Chapter 3

In the back room of his current shop, Ethan Rayne finished closing the wards of the inner circle of protection. He was in a very good mood. Not only had he sold a lot of costumes, all of which had been spelled to change their wearer during the coming Chaos enchantment, he'd learned of something he'd hardly dared to believe.

The young girl buying a fancy dress from him that was going to turn her into a brainless aristocratic bitch from a time centuries in the past was the Slayer. One of the brightest supporters of the Light, a merciless fighter of demons, a Champion of Order, who in less than an hour was going to be a pathetic girl who would run screaming away from the creatures of the night set free by the man's spell. If she managed to escape at all.

Ethan gave a happy sigh as he reveled in the loveliest detail of it all. The Slayer had accidentally let slip who was now her Watcher. Dear old Rupert Giles. The man who had once been his friend, who years ago had set him on his path into becoming a Chaos mage, all while helping him and other friends live the most decadent life possible, right up to the point when a younger Giles had suddenly developed a conscience, the wanker.

Back then, that man had promptly denounced and abandoned his friends over a little thing like raising a few demons, refused to practice the least bit of magic, joined those bloody boring blokes of the Watchers' Council and basically disappeared.

Now, after years of fruitless searching, Ethan had just learned his former compatriot was now a resident of this dull California town that was going to become a great deal livelier for the next twelve hours. Why, Giles might even have a funeral to look forward to in the morning, when he collected the dead body of his precious Slayer.

"Life is good --- and it's going to get better," crowed Ethan, as he gave his chest a joyous thump. He frowned as he felt paper crinkle in his shirt pocket during the touch, and put in his hand to draw out whatever was in there. It was a few crumpled bills of this country's money. _Oh, right, the young bloke I scammed. Come to think of it, he must have actually taken the box, since it was gone when I came back there, him too._

Ethan chuckled as he put the money in his pants pocket. _A nice little success, that. Best thing to happen, puts me in the right mood for this. Well, let's get on with it._

The Chaos mage knelt down in the middle of the casting circle and began the preliminary part of the ceremony. His mind now fixed on the details of the incredible feat of magic he was about to perform, Ethan Rayne totally forgot about the boy he'd cheated and the few dollars he'd taken from the teenager.

If he'd been a little more thoughtful, Ethan might have realized two things.

One, when he had appropriated the pathetic amount of money, Ethan had, under the rules of magic, acknowledged that the box full of toy car parts (yes, Ethan had looked and cursed at what seemed to be useless junk) had indeed been owned by the magician, and he had allowed of his own free will the transfer of the box and its entire contents into the possession of that young man who'd just been divested of all his funds. All of which had taken place inside a store imbued with Chaos magic directed into items that were to be sold to customers.

Two, Chaos played by no rules and favored no one.

*************************************************************************************

The Mystery Machine was a hit.

When Xander, Buffy, and Willow had shown up at the school to meet their charges they were to escort on Halloween night, a sudden rush had been made by every little kid there towards the teen wearing a cartoon van replica. Xander had looked around at a circle of children clustered around him, each of them open-mouthed in awe at something all of the youngsters had promptly recognized, despite being born nearly three decades after the first episode of _Scooby-Doo_.

Want to know how impressed people were? It wasn't that not a single child had made a grab, a poke, a touch against the fragile cardboard box.

It was the fact that Principal Snyder had uttered only a single half-hearted grunt of disapproval. From anyone else, that would have been enthusiastic applause.

After a few more minutes, all of the children were divided into three groups, with those in Xander's group the most pleased about their luck. Particularly when Xander started delivering an expert commentary on how to get the best and most candy while leading them off.

Willow and Buffy's charges were more troublesome, leading the exasperated girls to glower at each other and send a telepathic message of "It's going to be a long night."

Considering that, in a now-closed costume shop, an extremely dangerous spell was starting to be cast, the high-school students were more right than they knew.

A short time later, the three friends met again at the same point on one of the town's residential streets. As their charges scattered among the houses with glowing jack-o-lanterns set in the windows or on the front steps of those houses that had porches, Xander, still in his cartoon van costume, walked up to his two buddies standing by one of the houses' mailbox on its post by the curb, asking cheerfully, "Hey, guys, how's it going?"

He was met by looks of death from both, along with Buffy's gritted declaration of, "The day of my eighteenth birthday, I'm going to have my tubes tied! I'm never going to have kids!"

"Meet you there in the doctor's office! Bright and early!" also came from a truly furious Willow as she tried to scrape off a child-sized handprint outlined in chocolate stains from her formerly-white sheet, ineffectually rubbing this item of clothing against the mailbox post. Her sheet began creeping up, showing sexy boots and then trim, uncovered legs.

Xander stared in disbelief as more and more of Willow's bare legs came into view as the sheet of her ghost costume was pulled up by her unsuccessful attempts to clean it off. He croaked out, "Uh, Wils, just what are you wearing under there?"

"Nothing!" squeaked Willow, looking down with horror at what she was showing and hurriedly dropping the sheet.

You….went commando?" asked Xander in total brain overload.

"NO!" shrieked Willow, glaring at the boy, and then switching her infuriated gaze at the suddenly-giggling Buffy. The redhead angrily pointed at the Slayer and snapped, "It's all her fault! She convinced me, just before you got to the house, to wear something I've never put on in my life!"

"What?! WHAT?!" was instantaneously blurted out by the young man.

"I'm not telling you that!" At Xander's sudden stare at her lower body, Willow wrathfully shouted, "I'm not going to show you either! And look me in the eye when I'm yelling at you, you disgusting member of the male species!"

Desperately biting her lips to prevent from exploding with laughter, Buffy managed to clear her throat and tried to make peace between her two friends, one who had his eyes fixed on the rear end of the other who had turned around to glare at the Slayer. "Listen, Willow, it's not so bad and you looked really good in my best leather---"

Across the town, a ceremony came to an end, with the thunderous shout of "….JANUS!"

Willow Rosenberg staggered, a tidal wave of dizziness crashing down into her brain. After a few moments, she once again became aware of her surroundings. Especially the screams.

Looking around disbelievingly, the redhead saw some of the children they had been escorting were now running around in utter terror, in many cases being pursued by otherworldly creatures that Willow recognized with horror had just a few seconds ago had been their charges' friends and fellow students.

Another scream, this much closer, split the air, as the girl jerked her head around to stare at Buffy Summers, who in her career as the Slayer had shown to Willow bravery beyond compare. The young girl who was wearing the magnificent gown the blonde had brought at Ethan's now stood there trembling in absolute fright as she looked around, whimpering, "Where….where am I? What is this place?"

Unthinking of her actions, wanting only to comfort her friend in her sudden dread, Willow stepped forward, only to see Buffy flinch back, the blonde's face turning white and her eyes open to their widest, as the young Summers girl screamed at the top of her lungs and spun around to race off in panic-stricken flight.

Willow wasn't paying all that much attention. Her gaze was now fixed on the half of the mailbox protruding from her chest, when she'd walked into that container stepping towards Buffy. _It_…._doesn't hurt at all_, the young girl thought sluggishly. Her right hand came up to wave through the end of the mailbox, her fingers easily passing through the solid object. Willow blinked, noticing how the sheet of her costume also passed through the mailbox, her mind beginning to work again. "….I'm intangible…. like a….ghost?!"

More screams went through the air, including one very familiar one. Willow frantically looked further up the street, to see at the end of the block a blonde in a familiar costume flinch away from a three-foot-tall being dressed all in green and waving a crooked stick at the girl, who turned left and dashed down the side street, passing out of sight.

"XANDER!" Willow shouted, stepping away from the mailbox (_It still doesn't hurt_) to spin around and continue, "WE HAVE TO GO AFTER…Buffy.…" Her voice trailed off.

Parked on the wrong side of the street, a four-ton, garishly-painted 1968 Chevrolet Sportvan 108 sheepishly blinked its headlights at Willow.


	4. Chapter 4

_Okay, even for Sunnydale, this is weird_, was the first thought through the girl's mind. She closed her eyes and tried to take a deep breath. Nothing happened, and Willow's eyes popped open to look down at her body. _Oh. Right. Ghost. Ghosts. Don't. Breathe. Got. That_.

"Beeeeeeep!!!!"

Willow's attention was jerked away from her action of pushing her right fingers up through and up the side of the mailbox, and wiggling those fingers protruding from the top of the mailbox, all while giggling at this. She stared again at the Mystery Machine that had rolled forward a few feet to park by Willow and then honked at her. For some reason, looking into the front of that van, with its wide front windshield, the spare tire attached at the top of the radiator grille, and the shiny front bumpers, managed to comfort Willow, and finally got her brain into some kind of working order.

"Listen….Xander. I want you to blink your headlights twice for yes, and once for no, okay?"

Blink. Blink.

"Your name is Xander Harris, right?"

Blink. Blink.

"You were born in….May, 1930."

Blink.

Her eyes fixed on the headlights of a cartoon van, Willow said the most important question: "Do you feel all right?"

Blink. Blink.

Willow sagged, despite having an insubstantial body, and wished she could give a gasp of relief.

"Can you….control your, um, body, to drive around?"

Instead of the headlights blinking, the motor of the van suddenly rumbled into a growl of power, and the van abruptly shot backwards, its steering wheel spinning on its own to quickly turn the car in a sharp curve until it skidded to a stop perpendicular to the curb on the opposite side of the street from Willow. An instant later, the van shot forward, until it was two-thirds of the way to the far curb. The car then made another sharp turn to the left to complete a perfect Y-turn, speeding down the street away from an open-mouthed Willow.

Just before she was about to scream after Xander, Willow saw the rear brake lights of the van blaze red as it stopped and then she watched it drive backwards at an insane speed down the road towards her. Still going faster than the girl had ever driven, the brake lights of the van again turned on, sending the screech of skidding tires throughout the entire neighborhood, as the car spun around virtually on its own axis to slide diagonally across the street to stop at the exact position of the curb where Willow was standing. A moment later, the windshield wipers flicked across the front, once.

"Show-off," muttered Willow.

Blink. Blink.

Willow pointed down the street, yelling, "Buffy went left at the first side street! Go after her, and try to stop her, or keep following her!"

The Mystery Machine peeled rubber and then shot forward. When it reached the side street, it drifted through a skidding turn that would have won a nod of approval from any NASCAR racer. Willow watched this in fascination until the van was out of sight. She suddenly realized, "You idiot! Why didn't you get in there and drive with him?"

The redhead groaned, and started running down the street. After a few steps, she stopped again, muttering curses under her breath as she yanked her ghost costume off and wrapped it around her shoulders, clearly showing off her mini-skirt and clinging top. She hesitated, looking at the houses on her left, muttering, "Got to cut them off…. Here goes nothing." Willow made a slight turn to face the houses and after a momentarily pause, she ran forward, right into the buildings.

She kept running, despite numerous flinches, all while passing unharmed through whole houses and their entire contents, including people, which was really weird, both for her and the people she went through. Finally, Willow burst out of the houses and into the side street that Buffy and Xander had both taken. Looking down the street, she saw at the next intersection a cartoon van driving in circles around a girl in a pink dress on her knees and covering her eyes, cowering in terror.

"BUFFY!" yelled Willow, running to the intersection. Xander-van (as she now dubbed him) came to a stop, his nose pointing at her and his headlights shining on the girl in the sexy outfit and clearly no bra coming towards him at full bouncing speed. The headlights shifted to high beams, with the van rolling back to keep Willow in the brightest, most revealing light.

Coming to a stop in front of Buffy, Willow shot Xander-van a dirty look, and then worriedly stared at her friend. At the sudden change of light, the girl on her knees fearfully took her hands away from her face to see the girl standing across from her, dressed like….like.…

"Get away from me, you harlot!" shouted a proper lady, desperate to escape from the demon keeping her prisoner.

"_What did you call me???_" incredulously snapped Willow.

"Don't use that tone to your betters!" huffed the girl in the pink gown. "You're clearly a creature with no shame!"

Glaring at Buffy, Willow tried to think, all while keeping a firm grip on her temper. Clearly, like her and Xander, Buffy had turned into her costume, a noblewoman from several centuries ago who thought the world revolved around her and the lower classes were to be kept in their place. The only way to bring back the Slayer was to somehow reverse the change; however, Willow had no idea how it had happened in the first place.

"Giles!" blurted out Willow, ignoring the blank look on the noblewoman's face to stare at Xander-van, who encouragingly blinked his headlights twice. The redhead winced at the dazzling lights, saying sarcastically, "Could you turn it down a little, even if there aren't any cars coming towards you?"

The high beams changed to normal light intensity.

Rolling her eyes, Willow continued, "We've got to talk to Giles! He might know how to fix this, but…. I don't know where he is now --- his apartment, the school, wherever. We need to get to a phone---"

At that moment, the noblewoman screamed again and tried to hide behind Willow as a walking skeleton ambled into the intersection, its fleshless skull hungrily staring at the two women.

In a flash, Xander-van shot forward to stop just in front of the skeleton, the car's motor rumbling dangerously in warning.

The skeleton lurched backwards, a look of fear and disappointment somehow discernable on its skull, even though Willow was uncertain how anyone could tell without it having any face. It slowly turned around to stagger off, its bony feet tapping against the road asphalt at every step. Xander-van remained on guard until the walking pile of bones was well away, and then he rolled back to Willow and Buffy, giving a short honk of his horn that seemed, well, smug. _Beeep!_

Willow turned to look at Buffy, who was gaping at Xander-van, but she didn't seem about to do her usual screaming and running off. Willow shrugged and thanked whoever for small mercies, and tried to think. After a few moments, the redhead called to Xander-van, "Xander, we need to get to a phone, but I don't think any house here will let us in. Buffy's house is closest. You can drive us there, and, um---" Willow momentarily boggled at trying to get Lady Hopeless to use a phone, and then she rallied, "Well, we'll figure it out when we get there. Right now, we have to get off the streets and somewhere safe."

BEEEP! That seemed to be a honk of agreement, as both front doors of Xander-van swung smartly open. Willow turned to Buffy, who had taken a step back, her eyes wide. Sighing, the redhead urgently spoke, "Bu--- I mean, my lady" (inwardly gritting her teeth), "we must enter that, ah, coach to be taken to a safe place, protected from harm from the monsters now roaming this land."

The girl in the pink dress shot out an imperious finger, pointing it directly at Xander-van. "That is no coach! 'Tis a metal demon, drawn by no living horses, going about its fiendish business!"

BEEEEEEEEEEP!

Over Xander-van's outraged honk of protest, Willow shouted, "NO, IT ISN'T!" As she desperately thought, she added, "It's a….friendly spirit!"

At Buffy's dubious stare, Willow went on, "That….metal coach holds the soul of a most gentle knight, Alexander by name, who in his search for his true love, passed away from this world, but faithful to his vow to protect the innocent, defend the weak, and guard fair maidens, he was tasked to live again, his spirit residing inside a chariot of iron, to succor the flower of womanhood, by the grace of God!"

As Willow finished, she watched with disbelief the dreamy look that had suddenly appeared on Buffy's features. _She can't really be buying this load of crap, can she?_

The noblewoman, now firm of face, walked past the strumpet, to stand before the most strange and yet gallant soldier of high rank that she had ever met. Bending her knees in a deep curtsey, a lady who certainly knew her manners spoke in a respectful voice. "I pray thy pardon, sir knight. Wilt thou aid a maiden in distress, and someone else who hath not been that for lo these many years, I avow?"

The only reason that Willow didn't promptly pluck Buffy bald was that ghostly fingers couldn't rip away hair.

Xander-van's headlights dimmed. Lady Buffy probably took that as a sign of willing assent and knightly reverence. A fuming Willow was more prepared to bet that her best friend since kindergarten was rolling his eyes in the only way he could.

The redhead watched Buffy (aka Her Royal Brainlessness) cautiously enter the passenger side and climb into the seat, fussing with her gown, and then peering curiously at the dashboard and the glove compartment.

Shaking her head, Willow started to walk around to the driver's seat, until she stopped short and went back to the passenger side of the van behind the seat occupied by Buffy, looking thoughtfully at that part of the vehicle. Cautiously, she extended her hand until she had it right against the van's side, and inwardly flinching, she pushed it right through the metal. It didn't hurt at all, and Xander seemed to show no reaction to this, so Willow gathered up her courage and just walked through the side of the van into it.

Once there, she gingerly sat down cross-legged on the floor of the van. After a few moments, she looked down, and blushing, she unwrapped her ghost costume from her neck and dropped it into her lap. She thought, _I'm_…._inside Xander_. Hastily banishing that very strange and cause-of-stomach-quivering reflection, Willow tried to find something else to occupy her mind. Looking around the empty portion of the back of the van, Willow was a bit surprised at the bare area with an uncovered metal floor, sides and ceilings. _Come to think of it, I don't remember the back of the van being shown all that often during the cartoons. _Shrugging, Willow called out, "Okay, Xander, let's go."

Xander-van slowly closed both the driver and passenger doors, causing Buffy to give a squeak of surprise as the door shut by her. The van then slowly drove forward, bringing another startled gasp from the noblewoman that turned into a panicked yelp as the brakes of the van were suddenly slammed on. Buffy was thrown forward, promptly uttering a full-blow scream as she was pressed up against the front windshield to have a ringside seat, just a few feet away, of the girl in a tattered costume being chased by a wolfman across the front of the van.


	5. Chapter 5

Willow herself goggled at this, having poked her head into the front inside area of the van just after the sudden stop. As the young woman dressed in a cat costume that was now mostly in shreds ran from the right to the left of the van and then dodged around the left front corner of the van, Willow recognized this girl at once as Cordelia Chase. Her pursuer was a real Larry Talbot wolfman, with a human body and clothing, full facial hair, pointed ears, hairy clawed hands, and fangs. All that creature needed was Maria Ouspenskaya somberly chanting, "Even a man who is pure in heart…."

Just as this werewolf also ran around the left front corner of the van, baying after his prey, Willow bounced to her feet, which had the consequence of poking her ghostly head through the roof to frantically look for Cordelia, who was now rounding the van's right rear corner. Seeing, this, Willow yelled, "Cordy, run around to the driver's seat! We'll open the door for you!" Willow dropped to her knees back inside the van and snapped, "Xander, do it!"

The driver's door instantly swung open under Xander-van's command. Buffy emitted only a moderate scream at seeing Cordelia run past her window and then around the front of the van. The noblewoman's next scream was the equal of any of her previous deafening shrieks as the wolfman, slightly winded (the females never ran this fast in the Universal films), loped past the passenger window and followed the scent of his quarry across the front of the van.

Cordelia dove into the driver's seat, her door slamming shut on its own right after that. Not that she noticed, as she was busy screaming at a decibel level matching the girl in the pink dress on her right, as the wolfman clawed at the driver's window, howling at the top of its lungs in its urge to consume its victim cowering away from it. The other female screeching at the top of her lungs would be a nice snack for later.

Before Willow could suggest something, Xander-van acted on his own. BANG!

The entire van rocked, as all three girls were struck dumb by the driver's door bursting open much faster than before, to smash right into the wolfman's chest, hitting it hard enough to send it flying through the air, to land in a crumpled heap of moaning lupine agony a dozen feet away. Silver might be the only thing capable of killing a werewolf, but a slab of steel from an all-American late-sixties motor vehicle was quite capable of busting anything's chops.

The van then drove off down the street, obediently following the speed limits. There was a short period of silence, as the two currently-breathing females there got themselves under control, until Cordelia said in a tight voice, "Hey, Rosenberg, you got any explanation of why this steering wheel's working by itself and how come this car's driving without me touching the pedals?"

Willow grimaced, and began to explain. "Something weird happened tonight---"

"Well, duh. This is Sunnydale. Weirdness doesn't take the night off."

Willow snapped back at the woman who had interrupted her. "Will you let me finish? We have to call Giles, and see if he can help! Somehow, we all changed into our costumes --- we became whoever we were when we had them on!"

Cordelia cast a cool glance over Willow's racy clothing, and raised a sardonic eyebrow. "You decided to dress up as a hooker this year?"

As Willow's face became a deep red identical to the color of her hair, her ladyship decided to join in. "Verily, no decent woman would dress so as her. I see that thou art another sister of hers, sharing with her the same shameful livelihood."

"WHAT DID YOU SAY!?"

Hastily, Willow tried to clear things up before Cordelia decided to stuff Buffy into the van's glove compartment. "Buffy dressed up as an eighteenth-century noblewoman tonight. Right now, after the change, she's, uh, well, think of every Princess Barbie ever made and all the someday-my-prince-will-come songs deposited into an otherwise completely empty head."

Subsiding back into her seat, Cordelia let a thin smile flicker over her face while she glanced at Buffy's blank expression that showed the blonde girl had totally missed the insults. "You're beginning to show some spunk, Rosenberg. Maybe you should dress like that more often."

Willow's face turned red again, and she quickly held up her ghost costume for Cordelia to see. "I dressed up as a ghost! Watch this---" At that, Willow leaned forward to poke her left arm through the van's metal side, taking a secret satisfaction at how a girl who had tormented her for years turned pale at this.

Cordelia magnificently rallied after a few moments, asking, "So, uh, what about this car? Is it part of the Halloween freakiness tonight?"

Willow momentarily closed her eyes. This was going to be the hard part. She opened her mouth, shut it, and thought before trying again. "Oh, that's right, you never saw Xander's costume. He, well, he dressed up as the Mystery Machine van from the Scooby-Doo cartoons, and when whatever happened a while ago….he changed into this car."

There was a short pause, until from the driver's side came giggling sounds that rapidly increased to loud hysterical laughter, with Cordelia beginning to have tears trickling down her face, as an alarmed Willow watched.

Naturally, since nobody had been talking about her for the last few minutes, a now-bored Lady Buffy said brightly, looking down at her passenger seat, "By my faith, this chair is most marvelous soft!" At that, the girl put a blissful expression on her face, and vigorously wiggled her rear end all over the car seat.

In the street, Xander-van promptly popped into a 45-degree wheelie, and blasted a discordant BEEEEEEEEEEP! that resounded throughout the entire neighborhood, before the front of the van dropped back down, bouncing gently on all four wheels as the car came to a complete stop.

A few moments later, a woman's voice said in a tone of poisonous sweetness, directed towards the steering wheel, "Do you want a cigarette after that, Harris?"

Inside the van, Cordelia blinked to make sure her eyeballs were still in her head, and glared at a cowering Buffy. "Listen, you puffed-up pimple of a princess, you do anything like that again, and I'll build a guillotine especially for you!" The incensed brunette leaned back in her seat and folded her arms, as the van timidly started driving again.

Willow winced at Cordelia's outburst, and also at her own naughty thoughts as she wondered if Xander had left an oil stain behind in the street….

Hastily getting her mind out of the gutter (_I KNEW I should have never left Buffy talk me into wearing her most indecent outfit!_), Willow frowned, and asked a grumpy Cordelia, "Wait a second. Why didn't _you_ turn into your costume?"

Cordelia looked down at her shredded clothes and let out a screech of pure rage. "That hairy moron! He wrecked what I went all the way to Los Angeles for!"

"You didn't buy that costume here, in Sunnydale?"

The head cheerleader of Sunnydale High cast a frigid glance at Willow for asking that, sniffing, "You actually think I'd shop here, in this one-Starbucks town? No, I went to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where all the right people go."

Ignoring the new-money upper-class snobbery, Willow said thoughtfully, "We, that is, Buffy and I got our costumes at the new store here, Ethan's….and….Xander said he brought his toy car parts that were part of his costume from there!"

Now it was Cordelia's turn to become thoughtful. "The Cordettes got their costumes here, I think. Harmony got her costume at….Ethan's, you say? Audra went to Costume Town and got a sexy nurse outfit, but….I don't think anything happened to her, though I got chased by that overgrown dog right after that."

"What'd Harmony dress as?"

A strange expression came over Cordelia's face at that point, a mixture of glee and wonder. "Well, just for laughs, she decided to go as, um, a….nun."

There was now total silence among the women in the van, interrupted only by a burble of sound from the van's engine, that if it had come from a flesh-and-blood teenage boy instead of a chunk of Detroit steel, it would have suspiciously resembled a snigger.

"A most proper attire," grandly announced Lady Buffy. "I trow that fine lady hath lived a truly pure and chaste life to perfectly match her garments."

Willow and Cordelia looked at each other and simultaneously rolled their eyes.

The brunette pensively said, "The really odd thing was….well, after IT happened, two guys came up with lumpy faces, yellow eyes, and fangs. Harmony just pointed at them, chanted out loud for a few seconds in….Latin, I think, and….the guys right then and there poofed into dust and ashes!"

That little bit of news caused the passengers in the van to remain quiet for the rest of the drive to Buffy's house. As the van stopped at the curb in front of the house, Willow promptly walked through the side of the van, smirking at the stifled yelp by Cordelia, who nevertheless had the confident look always maintained by Queen C in the halls of the town's high school, when she walked around the front of the van to join Willow.

Lady Buffy peered nervously from the passenger seat, her door invitingly opened by Xander-van waiting for her to get out. She muttered, "Must we dwell in that hovel? A palace is far more fitting for such as I."

"Oh, you're so lucky your m--- Lady Joyce didn't hear you say that! You'd have wished for a good dose of the plague instead, you miserable excuse for a Slayer! Move your butt, or instead of a pea in your mattress, I'll put a bear trap in there!" yelled Willow, finally and totally losing her patience and her temper.

Her Blondness descended to the ground, stalking past the fuming redhead and the snickering brunette, her nose held high in the air as she refused to acknowledge the uncouth peasantry.

Willow and Cordelia were suddenly startled by the passenger door slamming shut and vigorous beeping from Xander-van.

BEEP! BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! BEEP-BEEP! BEEPITY-BEEP! BEEEEEEP!

"Okay, Xander, but be careful out there." After saying that, Willow turned to the house, seeing Cordelia's look of disbelief. "_What?!_"

The head cheerleader's eyes narrowed, and she slowly said, "If he'd turned into a border collie and he'd scratched his paw once against the ground, would you have known that he meant 'Little Timmy's fallen down the well, Farmer Johnson's barn is on fire, and I've solved Fermat's Last Theorem?'"

"Don't be ridiculous! Xander's worst subject is math." At Cordelia's gimlet stare, Willow threw up her hands and said in exasperation, "Look, he's Xander! No matter who--- _what_ he is, he'll go help!" Looking around and not seeing Buffy, Willow snarled, "Where'd Her Idiocy go?"

Cordelia pointed down the side passage to the back yard. Willow rushed after, calling over her shoulder, "Will you come _on_? I'll show you where the spare key is, but we have to call Giles!"

Shaking her head, Cordelia took a step towards the Summers house, and then she stopped and turned around to stare at Xander-van still parking at the curb, his motor running. She opened her mouth, paused, and sighed. "Harris, this could only happen to you."

Xander-van's right headlight flickered off for a fraction of a second. It could, under the current conditions, be described as a wink.

Cordelia turned around to walk towards the house, hearing behind her Xander-van rumble off down the street in a smooth rush of horsepower. There was a faint smile on her face, as the cheerleader went to find the other two girls. That was easy enough, as all she had to do was to follow the yelling.

"_Stop calling me the Whore of Babylon, you blonde airhead whose roof doesn't match the basement!"_

Cordelia's smile widened into an evil grin, as she mused, "It might be worth hanging around with these dweebs just for the prime blackmail material alone."

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Besides the usual Sunnydale Syndrome of ignoring, explaining away, and refusing to believe what they had seen and experienced of the unearthly events that occurred in their hometown, the city's residents also had one single particular reason for never talking about the events of Halloween Night after that holiday.

Witnessing a 1960's cartoon van, that every single person there had at one time or other watched on the television screen, which was now driverlessly racing up and down the streets of their home on Halloween, charging at monsters and driving away these fiends attacking people, all while emitting cheerful beeping honks, ultimately convinced the entire town to just shut up about it before they were all committed to a psychiatric facility with lots of pills, straitjackets, and padded walls.


	6. Chapter 6

He was not having a good night.

Spike the vampire, known to history as "William the Bloody", and also perfectly willing to answer to "AAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHHchoke-gurgle", had thought he would be spending that idiotic holiday known to him as a lad as All-Hallow's Eve and here in the colonies as Halloween the same as he had ever done in his unlife. He would disappear into his lair, usually with a victim or two to pass the time improving his torturing skills, and come out only when the final piece of candy corn had been handed out and the last pumpkin on the front steps of the houses had been kicked into orange chunks.

The vampire had the same feelings of disgust and detestation towards the festival on the last day of October as did Ebenezer Scrooge had towards Christmas in the first half of Charles Dicken's classic story. Spike always hoped when reading that tale that at the narrative's ending, the merchant would find his balls, tell the ghosts to get stuffed, and go back to his wonderful ways of miserliness, customer-cheating, society-hating, and grinding his employees' faces into the muck. Besides, Tiny Tim always made Spike want to snack on that little sod's neck.

Tonight, Spike had intended to ignore what was happening outside on the streets of Sunnydale, staying in his crypt to go over his new plan to kill the Slayer, lay waste to the entire town, and bring fire and blood to the world. The usual, right, mate?

Plus, he was a little concerned about Drusilla. Instead of her normal maniac babbling about the stars and the moon, Miss Edith, and "buy low, sell high", the third member of the team of vampires that had won the title of the Scourge of Europe had for the last week or so been sitting slumped in a chair in a corner, staring blankly at the moldy crypt walls. Not a single peep out of her, which was making Spike really nervous. She was either planning an atrocity unmatched in a millennium, or she was going to go shopping. Serious worries, either way.

Spike had been thoughtfully reading the latest ACME(copyrighted) Catalogue for Villains, Mad Scientists and The Just Misunderstood If A Jury Will Actually Buy That when the event had happened. He'd been startled out of his careful consideration of the latest offering in the catalogue, a double pit-trap. Reading the description of one pit dug and clumsily camouflaged for a hero to stand in front of it, snicker at the bad guy's idiocy, and then walking around it to fall into the second, perfectly camouflaged pit-trap had caused Spike to start excitedly jotting down notes at his worktable. Considering how much peroxide the Slayer used in her hair, the fumes of those chemicals surely must have killed off enough brain cells for this latest scheme to actually work.

An instant later, Spike was on his feet, his body tingling as it had never done since he'd had a demon take it over, as the immense wave of mystical energy finished passing through the crypt.

"Bloody hell, what was THAT!?" Spike shook his head, ignoring the pen driven halfway through the tabletop. Instead, he spun around to look at Drusilla, who hadn't moved the slightest. Frowning, Spike moved closer and stopped in front of her, bending down to look her in the eyes. There was nothing there, not the madness of a gentle girl who'd seen her entire world murdered in front of her, not the rage of the demon that had possessed her body and mind, not the occasional softness that had enslaved Spike into her protector and lover. Her eyes were totally blank.

A chill went down the male vampire's spine as he stood up, saying uncertainly, "Look, love, I'm going to pop outside for a minute, see what's going on. You….just stay there, all right?" Spike backed up, worriedly watching Drusilla as she showed no sign whatever that she had heard or paid attention to him. Muttering under his breath, the vampire left the crypt, and standing in the graveyard, he looked towards the main lights of the town of Sunnydale.

Listening to the screams in the night coming from there, and sniffing the blood and terror floating through the air, Spike slowly smiled. "Now, THIS will get Drusilla out of her funk!"

Wrong.

Some time later, Spike was barely keeping his temper. He'd basically dragged Drusilla out of the crypt to take her to the streets of Sunnydale, and she'd gradually come to life, beginning to stumble along while she'd been held up by his arm, and to start talking again. Unfortunately, she'd begun a truly major whingeing, moaning and babbling like he'd never heard her do before.

"Spike, the stars, the stars, all gone in chaos, little kitten in metal, the man from your abode took his riches, bad, bad man, kitten in metal and wheels, riding the streets, knight against the dark, standing for friends at home, high lady low wits, the Red Ghost, dark-haired sharp tongue, Slayer gone, gone, gone---"

"WHAT!" Spike had been listening with only half an ear, otherwise gleefully watching the pandemonium and uproar throughout the town, as people followed the dictates from the costumes they had been wearing and others reacting to this. The pair of vampires had by then wandered into an otherwise deserted retail street, with all the shops now closed, but shaded in the daylight hours by the massive century-old oaks lining the street, standing tall in gaps cut in the sidewalks.

The sudden mention of the Slayer caught Spike's attention, as he whirled around to grab Drusilla by her shoulders and start shaking her.

"What about the Slayer, love? Did she leave Sunnydale? She sure would've been running around here with all this mess, trying to act like a hero. We would've seen her….Dru, you said she was gone…. Bleedin' hell, do you mean gone, as in dead? Dru, talk to me!"

At the last, Drusilla tore herself out of Spike's grip and stood before the vampire, her face now totally serious and looking him full in the face, as she slowly and intensely said, "They will be the end of us, Spike, our deaths by the colors, colors, and the flowers."

Right. That was IT.

Spike roared in a voice that made the shop windows shiver. "WE'RE BLEEDIN' VAMPIRES IN EVERY SENSE OF THAT ADJECTIVE! WE DON'T GET KILLED BY SODDIN' COLORS AND FLOWERS!"

Ominous headlights came on behind the two vampires.

As a car's engine roared to full power and its wheels shriekingly spun against the asphalt for a few moments before they caught and the vehicle raced towards the vampires at an extreme velocity, Spike stood stunned in the street as the headlights came nearer, with the demon squinting at the lights as he desperately tried to see who was about to run them down.

The blonde vampire finally did the sensible thing when the car was just a hundred feet from them and rapidly cutting the distance, as he dived out of the path of the automobile while yelling at the same time, "DRU, RUN FOR IT!"

Hitting the ground twenty feet away and rolling while getting to his feet, Spike froze as he heard with horror the sickening sound of several tons of metal colliding with a hundred pounds of undead flesh. Snapping his head around, the vampire disbelievingly watched as Drusilla was launched into the air, to land with bone-shattering force thirty yards down the street.

Now paralyzed by shock, Spike watched as the body of his lover lying on the ground convulsed in agony over her smashed skeleton and other injuries. Even for a vampire, there were limits to what their demon-controlled bodies could take, and Drusilla was right at the point when her existence could now truly end.

The only part of Spike's own body that seemed capable of moving was his head, as he turned it towards the car that had done this. It had skidded to a stop at the side of the street, fifty feet from where it had hit Dru, spinning around right after the impact, so that the front of what Spike absently recognized as a van was pointing right at the vampire.

The van had not escaped injury, either. The entire front windshield had shattered, crazed with cracks that frosted every inch of the glass that looked as it would fall out any second in a million pieces. Below this, the middle of the van's nose was caved in by a massive dent that had fractured the radiator grille and sent steam hissing from ruptured water hoses. Both of the van's headlights were now off, as one was shattered, while the other headlight dangled limply by an electrical cable from the front of the car.

Taking a slow step forward, Spike heard Dru's whimpering and cast a despairing glance towards his lover. Right after that, a very peculiar noise was heard by the vampires. It sounded like…."Plink!"

Spike blinked, and looked at where the noise had come from. His jaw promptly dropped open in utter astonishment. The front windshield of the van that had hit Dru was….repairing itself.

From the right side of the van toward the left side from where Spike was dazedly watching, the glass was rippling outwards in waves just like that seen in a puddle after tossing in a rock. As the glass settled back, the cracks vanished, leaving the glass once again clear and undamaged. It took only a few seconds for the entire front windshield to look as good as new.

Deeper "Plunks!" and "Sprongs!" resounded from lower down the front of the van. The body-shaped dent there now began to disappear as the caved-in metal and chrome of the radiator grille pushed out into their original appearance, the pieces fitting back together and all damage vanishing. The puffs of steam from the burst water hoses dissipated and never returned. Spike was quite sure that these had also been repaired.

"Ping!" The left shattered headlight suddenly became intact and the bulb flickered on, to once again become bright. The next sound Spike heard was exactly like that produced by someone in an Italian restaurant inhaling a triple-thick strand of spaghetti, as his bulging eyes watched the dangling right headlight be drawn back into its original position, and then joined its brother light into illuminating the befuddled vampire watching all this.

For a few moments, the van just remained there, in perfect shape as it was the day it rolled off the assembly line. Then, its headlights blazed into high beams, making Spike flinch from the brightness, and its engine roared back into life, as the van shot forward.

Spike dodged ten feet to the left without thinking, sending him further away from the van and ready for more evasive maneuvers, only to suddenly realize in horror that he wasn't the van's target.

The van skidded in a 180-degree turn, laying down rubber, and headed directly for Drusilla.

"NOOOOO!!" screamed Spike, dashing after the van with his full vampiric speed.

On the ground in her agony, Drusilla still noticed the increasing illumination of the van racing towards her. Her head tilted to watch what was coming, her eyes squinting in the bright light, and a tender smile appeared on the girl's beautiful face, as she whispered her final word on earth. "Kitten."

Drusilla the vampire, the dewy-eyed, closed these and a look of peace appeared on her features at the last.

The van skidded to an abrupt stop just fifty feet after its right front wheel had run over and crushed the woman's skull, and immediately headed backwards at its full speed, the breeze of its passage blowing away a small heap of ashes on the street.

Spike was now well past rage or fury and into an absolute state of maniac frenzy as he sprinted towards the van driving right at him in a straight line despite doing it in reverse. Judging it exactly, he jumped right at the van's rear double doors and smashed into them, caving in one and ripping open the other with his bare hands, to enter the back of the van, crouched over, claws and fangs ready to tear into shreds…. nobody?

Ignoring the fact the van was still racing backwards at well past the speed limit, and his own berserker mood, Spike was still flummoxed by the empty driver's seat and the steering wheel turning on its own. This object suddenly made a quick jerk to the left, sending Spike crashing into the van's side, and the van's engine roared much louder, as the vehicle achieved its maximum speed.

Still in a crouch, Spike twisted around to look out past the van door he'd torn open. In the car's hellish illumination of the intermixed rear and brake lights blazing away, the yard-wide tree trunk of the majestic oak at the side of the street, now just a few feet away from the back of the van about to collide with it, looked as if it had been painted with blood.

A few minutes later, Spike finally felt the bones of his neck heal, allowing him to turn his head. That sudden movement only increased the agony in the rest of his entire body that had come hurtling out of the rear of the van as if he'd been shot out of a cannon, to smash directly into the tree right after the van's collision with that fine specimen of a Quercus kelloggii, also known as the California black oak.

Groaning in pain from all his broken bones, organ damage, missing teeth, and numerous splinters in his face, Spike felt the haze of his hurts momentarily lift from his brain for him to finally take notice of his surroundings.

Which, at this point, included the van.

About twenty feet from him, Spike blearily noticed the inert van resting in the street was in really bad shape. About all of the rear half of the vehicle was totally destroyed in a twisted wreck of misshapen metal, with the roof, sides, and rear axle at that point all having been rammed back toward the front. That part of the van wasn't in that much better shape, with the left front wheel Spike could see being completely flat, the driver's door dangling open from just one hinge, and the front windshield again completely destroyed.

"Plink!"

Spike's eyes that had closed for a few seconds opened again, wide with terror, and he swiveled them to watch something he'd seen before. The front windshield of the van was once again in perfect repair, as clear as….well, glass.

"Clink!" "Puuuuffff!"

The driver's door shifted up into the proper position and closed. The van rocked and lifted, as the flat front left fire re-inflated.

Spike looked around wildly as well as his destroyed body permitted. A flare of hope came into his mind as his attention was caught by what he saw a few yards up the street, where there was a dark slit in the curb. It was a storm drain.

The vampire desperately checked his body, and found that his left arm was now in fairly reasonable working condition at this point (not more than a couple of fractures), and he used it to turn his body over and then he pushed that arm against the ground, whimpering at the pain. Despite this, his body moved a few inches toward the storm drain and the chance of escape. Whatever else, Spike was quite sure that terrifying car couldn't get into the sewers, and once he slid through that storm drain, he could heal up and survive.

That thought made him ignore the further punishment his body was taking while crawling forward, and also disregard the sounds he was hearing behind him as a repairing cartoon van went through all the weird noises an animation studio could create for the soundtrack of a television series that was hosted for forty years by the CBS, ABC, WB, and CW networks.

Now, the only thing that mattered was, could he get to the storm drain before that soddin' horseless carriage fixed itself?

A short time later, the answer to that seemed to be….No.

After carefully maneuvering to put its tailpipe exactly in the position it wanted, the Mystery Machine set its brakes and brought its engine to a triumphant roar of full power, as the van's exhaust blasted away every speck of ash that had once been the corporeal form of Spike the vampire.


	7. Chapter 7

Aside from the whole 'no soul and demon occupying the body' thing, there were occasional advantages in being a vampire. You had a really long life, as long as you stayed away from toothpick and pencil factories, not to mention Slayers during that certain time of the month. If you did get hurt, you would heal really fast, even during the last time when you forgot to pay attention to the calendar and answered without thinking that, yes, her butt did look fat. The broken fingers from having a toilet seat repeatedly slammed on your hand cleared up right away, you bet.

As he ran at his top speed through the streets of Sunnydale on Halloween Night, Angel continued thinking about the plus factors in his unlife's current condition. Never being out of breath meant that he could laugh forever at the top of his lungs at what had happened to Xander Harris.

In the Crawford Street mansion, Angel had been staying home during the night's festivities, occupied by his usual schedule: brooding, tidying up, brooding, checking for split ends, brooding, doing a Barry Manilow medley just to torment Angelus, and for a change, moping around the house while wondering if Brenda Walsh would ever return to Beverly Hills High School. He'd just been about to write a letter to Aaron Spelling when he felt an unbelievable wave of magic wash over him, and looked outside the house at the bedlam now in the streets of Sunnydale.

Angel had anxiously made his way to Buffy's house, despite being delayed numerous times to protect people from creatures from the movies, television, comics, and all of mankind's stories. Finally, he'd gotten there just in time to break up an attack from several demons who saw their chance to try to kill the Slayer during the confusion.

Angel turned up a side street, looking around, while at the same time thinking about what had happened then in the Summers house. He had to admit, it was a new one on him in personal combat when your opponent was distracted by a red-haired girl stepping nearly all the way through him and then turning around to actually stay in his face while shouting, "BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA!" Plus, Angel had never seen anyone actually clobbered by a frying pan, as had happened to his foe right after that by a really-built brunette in a tattered cat costume.

Once he'd removed the demon bodies, Angel had come back into the house to undergo one of his existence's oddest events: being greeted by a simpering Buffy Summers. Quick explanations had been made while the girl in the pink dress had clung to his arm, calling him her "true protector" and basically giving him the willies. At least the distraction of a ghostly Willow in a most….unusual outfit and the other girl giving him a cold-eyed stare meant he could keep his conversations with Lady Buffy short.

Angel had to admit to the two girls that he had no idea of what had happened, or how to do anything about it, and he had listened to Willow's call to Giles that had been interrupted by the man's roar of rage at the first mention of the name 'Ethan Rayne' along with an impressive outburst of obscenities as the blushing girl described the man who had sold them their costumes. Quick directions had been given to the librarian on where to find that man's costume shop and he'd promptly promised to go there and sort things out, in a tone that even Angelus found disturbing, before Giles had abruptly hung up.

The vampire had been edging away from the most dimwitted girl he'd ever met and trying to politely peel her fingers off his arm, when he'd had a brainwave and offered to meet Giles at the costume shop. A dry look from the brunette, whose name he found out to be Cordelia, meant that his motives weren't any secret to her, but then Willow had looked concerned and she suggested that instead, he go see if Xander Harris was all right. Looking around, Angel had been a bit surprised that the boy wasn't with the girls as he always seemed to be, and the vampire had asked what had happened to him. Willow and Cordelia had looked at each other then, and giving a sigh, the most intelligent student in Sunnydale High had told Angel all about a certain costume.

The vampire had managed to get out of the house and at least halfway down the block before howling with laughter.

A wide grin on his face, Angel now headed into the industrial section of Sunnydale. Looking up a side street as he passed by, the vampire saw a van painted in green and blue with red flower petals on the sides drive across the intersection further down the block. Skidding to a stop, Angel spun around and ran down the street, reaching the intersection quickly enough to see the brake lights of a car driving away from him. He shouted, "XANDER!"

The brake lights lit up as the car stopped, and then it made a quick u-turn to slowly drive towards the individual in the black clothing standing in the middle of the deserted street and having a fit of the giggles.

The car rolled right up to the vampire and then stopped. Angel wonderingly reached out to touch the front of the van that was now the current incarnation of a teenage boy that the vampire loathed. He found that what was before him was indeed totally real, despite having existed only as a cartoon for decades. At that, Angel, who had been Angelus, and before that, Liam from Ireland, finally lost it.

Leaning his shoulder against the front of the car, the vampire wrapped his arms around himself, closed his eyes, and guffawed totally without any restraint, his entire body shaking with mirth that resounded throughout the empty street and the blank-walled warehouses in the block.

Eventually, it had to end, as Angel let go a last few chuckles and opened his eyes to see he was looking down the radiator grille of the van that had stayed unmoving throughout it all. There was something caught in the metal grating there. Idly curious, Angel shifted his position from leaning against the van to straighten up, and he reached out and pulled away a cloth from the bars. As if that had been a signal, Xander-van now stirred, his motor running steadily, and rolled back about fifteen feet from the vampire now examining what he had in his hands in the glare of the van's headlights.

Angel looked at the cloth with puzzlement. It was just a black rag, until he turned it over and held it up in the light shining from the van to see that it was actually a bandanna, with a white skull-and-crossbones symbol embroidered on it. Angel stared at this in total bafflement, until his attention was distracted by the increasing rumble of Xander-van's engine.

The vampire looked up to see the van in the street staying stock-still as the noise of the car engine began to echo throughout the block. Angel took a step forward, bringing up the cloth in his hand, and started to ask, "Xander, what's this thing here and---"

The growl of the engine increased.

Angel abruptly came to a stop and stared at the front of the vehicle with its wide windshield, spare wheel, and broad and glittering radiator grille. For some odd reason, Angel had the impression that the van was….glaring. At him.

As nonchalantly as possible, Angel took a step backwards.

The van rolled forward a few feet.

It was a bit difficult, but Angel reached deep down into himself and added a touch more nonchalance to his next step.

The van rolled a few more feet forward.

Angel tried to recall a different word for 'nonchalance' while taking another---

Oh, the hell with it.

He spun around and ran for his unlife.

Behind Angel, the van's engine roared with power and its wheels screeched against road asphalt before they caught and hurled the car forward.

Knowing there was no way even a vampire could outrun a van with a fervent thirst for the demise of a being with an obsession for every known hair-product, Angel frantically looked ahead for a chance to get out of the street. Unfortunately, the road was lined solely with warehouses with blank walls, rolling steel garage doors, and steel-reinforced front doors. He couldn't afford the few seconds necessary to tear his way into these buildings, when the delay would result in having a Goodyear tire being used as a suppository on him.

Looking further ahead, while hearing the noise of the van coming closer, Angel was thrilled at seeing a small alley just a block down the street, on the right. Tucking his arms against his sides, the vampire tried to find any more possible speed in himself as he pounded straight ahead. He couldn't let Xander know what the Irishman was going to do until he made a break for the alley at the very last second, lest the van cut him off and then turned him into a two-dimensional vampire on the surface of the street. Angel managed to pick up the pace on his panic-stricken flight, yet the van seemed to be coming nearer. He knew better than to turn his head around to look, yet it sounded as if it was going to be really close.

Keeping his head forward, Angel waited until the last possible moment when coming up to the alley, and then he cut to the right as hard as he could. A howl of pure rage came from the van's engine, with the car nearly touching the running vampire, and it shot forward in a surge of power that overtook Angel.

He'd almost made it, but the van managed to clip Angel on his hip, the front right corner of the van colliding with the vampire hard enough to launch his body through the air unerringly into the alley.

The entire street reverberated with the sound of skidding tires as Xander-van ferociously braked and then spun around in the tightest possible curve when his speed slowed enough for him to turn without tipping over.

The van quickly drove up to the alley opening and came to a stop, its headlights shining on something….interesting.

A metal garbage can rolled out of the alley, accompanied by sound effects: DINKAdinkaDINKAdinka, etc.

The loud noises came from the rim of the garbage can clattering against the asphalt, while the softer noises were the intervals when Angel's nose was squashed against the ground, cushioning the outer edge of the circular section of the garbage can when it revolved to bring that extremely unhappy individual's face pressing down.

It was all because the vampire was in the most ridiculous posture of his entire existence. Stunned by being hit by the van, Angel had been lofted into the alley to carom off the side walls and to drop neatly into the garbage can as expertly as Minnesota Fats in sinking the nine-ball when there was no pressure.

The most humiliating thing about it was that when falling limply into the garbage can, Angel's body had jackknifed, his lower body folded against his upper body, so that his arms were pinned behind his back, his legs were poking straight up, his head was between his thighs, and his rear end was resting on something that was squishy and damp, with the indescribable liquid beginning to soak through his pants.

The garbage can came to a stop in the middle of the street, and then it began to rock slightly, as Angel desperately tried to use his vampiric strength to rip apart the container. Unfortunately, he couldn't get any leverage to accomplish this, despite increasing his panicky efforts when the van shining its headlights at the garbage can slowly began to increase the rumble of its engine.

Across the town from a van and a vampire, a fist made a solid thump! when it landed, with the slightest twist of the hand at the last second that splits the skin. Ethan Rayne was smashed back into his chair, his rebound in falling forward interrupted when two hands grabbed the front of his shirt, and used it to pull the battered man up into the air, holding him dangling a few inches from the floor, as an icy voice spoke three words.

"Talk or die."

Looking deep into the eyes of the man who'd broken him, Ethan knew he'd pushed Ripper too far. Spitting out a piece of a chipped tooth, the shop proprietor managed to gasp, "The statue! Smash the statue!"

There was a second's hesitation as Rupert Giles wrathfully stared at the man who'd once been his friend, and realized he'd been told the truth. The librarian then let go as the man fell to the floor, ignoring the hollow thud of Ethan's head hitting the ground and that man's groaning descent into unconsciousness, to turn and stare at the small statue of Janus across the room.

The only thought in Angel's mind as he frantically squirmed inside the garbage can was, _I really don't want to die like this. It's so….so….UNDIGNIFIED!_

The van's roaring engine reached its ultimate horsepower level just before releasing its brakes.

A hand with bruised knuckles wrapped around a statue and threw it to the ground, smashing it into uncounted pieces.

Angel saw several tons of steel, glass, and plastic turn into a hundred and sixty pounds of teenage boy carrying a cardboard box festooned with toy car parts. There was a shocked look on Xander's face for a moment, until his eyes rolled back in his head and the boy slumped forward in a faint, with the box breaking his fall as it crumpled into a heap of cardboard and shattered plastic.

A few minutes later, a freed Angel stalked towards Xander. It might have been more menacing, if after every few steps, Angel hadn't stopped to gingerly shake one leg after another, to flick off whatever liquid had been clinging to them. He hadn't looked behind himself to see what had happened to the back of his pants, or into the garbage can he'd finally escaped from, to see what his rear end had been pressed up against.

This was Sunnydale. It could be anything.

Angel finally stopped in front of Xander, looking down at the unconscious boy. There seemed to be nothing seriously wrong with him, as according to the vampire's ears, Xander was breathing normally and his heartbeat was fine. Of course, this might soon change, considering the vile mood Angel was in.

As he stared at Xander, Angel was seriously considering doing something to the boy that Angelus was bloodthirstily proposing. Or, at the very least, giving young Mr. Harris a good kicking.

Finally, the signs of a titanic struggle inside his mind evident on the vampire's face, Angel looked up, towards the heavens, and muttered, "Somebody is going to owe me for this." He reached down towards Xander.

A few minutes later, a still-fuming Angel walked away from the place where he'd almost met his end. His irritation had been only slightly lessened by ripping the cardboard box into tiny pieces and taking off every toy car part, laying them in the street, and then stomping all of them into splinters. The vampire shifted the still out-cold boy he was carrying over his shoulder, and suddenly looked thoughtful.

He reached down Xander's legs to lift him up until Angel could wrap his right arm around the back of Xander's knees, with the upper two-thirds of the teenager dangling down Angel's back. An innocent expression on his face, Angel began to saunter down the street, his gait causing Xander's head and chest to swing back and forth, until the boy's face began to slap against Angel's still-damp rear end, with accompanying liquid smacking sounds


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning:

A small group of people were in the school library of Sunnydale High.

Rupert Giles looked around at those who had joined him for their free period, warily eyeing them all. What got his attention first was the newcomer to his place of work.

A few minutes ago, he had surreptitiously checked his Oxford English dictionary for the exact definition of 'sashay' and he had found it precisely defined Cordelia Chase's entrance into the library, as that girl had walked into there knowing everyone's attention would be on her. She had headed for the nearest chair, sank into it as if it were a throne, and began proclaiming the latest school gossip.

As Giles rubbed his aching knuckles, he and the others had listened to how an unknown individual named Larry, who was evidently a football player, which explained why Giles had never met him in the library, was now out for the season with a broken leg he'd gotten last night and wouldn't talk about, but in his hospital room, when the nurse had turned the television set on to the Cartoon Channel, that athlete had screamed and dived under his covers.

Or that a girl, given for some peculiar American reason the name of Harmony, was now walking around the school, carrying a Bible and blessing people, all while wearing a plain grey dress that reached to the floor and had a neckline that started at her eyebrows.

This….Cordelia had finally finished talking and she was now filing her nails and smirking while listening to Buffy profusely and abjectly apologizing to a grim-faced Willow ticking off from a very long list every individual insult, affront, slur, and slight she'd received from the blonde last night.

Giles suddenly stopped woolgathering and listened with alarm to the edge now in Buffy's voice as that girl decided she'd had enough. The man started to open his mouth, until another voice spoke first.

"Hey, Rosenberg," calmly said Cordelia, lifting up her hand and intently examining the nail she'd been working on. "About last night, there's something I've been wondering about."

Still glaring at Buffy, Willow said brusquely, "What, Cordy?"

"How'd you talk?"

That got everyone's attention, with the other two girls now looking at the brunette in puzzlement. Willow asked blankly, "What do you mean, how did I talk?"

Cordelia sighed, drawling it out. "Duuuuuuuuhhhhh. I made that sound by using my diaphragm to push air through my lungs up my throat, and vibrated my vocal cords around the air flow, among other things. However, you were a ghost last night. No breathing, and all of you was intangible anyway, which meant there was no way for you to make any sound. So….how'd you talk?"

Willow and Buffy's faces went blank, and then they both looked at each other and frowned in thought.

Over the next few moments of silence, Giles gratefully accepted the lack of tension between his Slayer and her friend and the diversion of possible conflict among them, until a worm of suspicion suddenly entered his brain. It was helped along by Cordelia going back to filing her nails, with her left side of her face presenting a calm exterior to the others and the right side of her face that was shown to Giles suddenly giving him a brazen wink.

Rupert Giles uneasily leaned back in his chair and thought hard about how a young girl who ruled a dozen-member cheerleading squad with a rod of iron would have no problem dealing with the group dynamics of a much smaller team. His attention was brought back to the most-impressive newcomer as a quick look of concern swept over her face and Cordelia jerked her chin for him to look over at where she was pointing.

A moment later, Giles stood up, took a book off his desk, and carried it over to one of the shelves. As he checked the spine of the book, and then leaned down to place it in its correct location, the Englishman was right behind Xander Harris.

Earlier, that boy had slouched into the library and he had reluctantly answered their questions about his Halloween experiences, including the shocking news of how Spike and Drusilla had met their ends. He had firmly refused to go into more detail, including exactly what it felt like to be a motor vehicle, and if Angel had found him. A very terse answer of "Yes, and then I got home," was given for the last question, along with Xander absently scrubbing hard his face with his palm, and lapsing into a sulky silence that had lasted for the rest of his stay in the library.

At least, until Cordelia had directed an alarmed Giles' attention to where he could see that Xander had been looking blankly into the distance and silently mouthing words. Now, the librarian was close enough to listen to whatever the teenager was saying.

"Vroom, vroom."

Later, Giles could never remember exactly how he had gotten back to his desk and found himself polishing his glasses at a record-setting pace. He was unnerved enough to stop wondering about Ethan Rayne. After Giles had smashed the statue, he had left the shop and the unconscious man to go check on Buffy and the others. After making sure they were all right and the Halloween costumes no longer affected their wearers, Giles had returned to the shop, only to find Ethan was….gone.

Where the devil was that bastard?

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While driving out of town, Ethan congratulated himself through his fog of pain that he'd gotten a rental car with automatic transmission. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding an icebag against the right side of his badly battered face, there would have been no possible way to drive a car with a stick shift.

That seemed to be the only fortunate thing to have occurred over the last twenty-four hours. He'd had to leave behind all his costumes and other stock when he'd come to and dragged his beaten body to his rental car, taking with him only his wallet, a duffel bag containing clothing and a shaving kit that was already in the car, and a few magical trinkets that were too valuable to be left behind. He'd sweated blood (literally, there hadn't been time to bandage himself) while delaying the few minutes needed to gather up the items of power, desperately hoping that Rupert Giles wouldn't show up again for a more prolonged discussion.

Ethan lowered the icebag and glanced in the rear-view mirror. He would have winced at what was revealed, if his face wasn't already hurting too much. Despite stopping at one of those ubiquitous convenience stores in this country for quick repairs from a medical kit and several hastily swallowed pain pills, both sold to him by an indifferent clerk who had allowed the Englishman to patch himself up in the store's lavatory, his face still resembled a tomato run over by an overloaded lorry.

Numerous cuts and bruises were all over his features, with his right eye swollen completely shut and the other eye only able to see through a thin slit. The rest of his body was just as banged up, but this was simply not shown for any observer to be appalled by the injuries.

_Bloody hell, I forgot how hard Ripper could hit._

The magician momentarily brooded over revenge, wondering if there was currently any way he could shove a spiky stick up his former friend's arse. Ethan reluctantly realized that in his present condition, both physically and financially, there was no chance of this. Even half a day of dozing in the car after patching himself up just regained enough energy for him to operate his vehicle without getting into any serious accidents. He sighed and concentrated on driving, glad to be heading far, far away from a now-detested town and towards any other place that offered more opportunities for a proponent of anarchy.

_Well, at least the whole bloody fiasco's all over and done with._

As the Englishman's car passed by the Sunnydale town limits sign, a last tiny flicker of the Halloween Chaos magic reached out, and struck.

A totally bewildered Ethan Rayne suddenly found himself uttering, in a perfect American accent, the complaining declaration: "And I'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!"


End file.
